Computer Scam Retorts

If you have a computer, odds are good you've gotten calls from scammers who want to "fix" the problem you didn't even know you had.

My computer, my cat Jim-Bob

A couple of weeks ago, I  got a call from some guy with a really heavy accent who wanted to help me with  my computer. Between the static in the phone line (which happens just about every time it rains) and his heavy accent, I never could understand what his name was—but I was pretty sure he was a scammer. You know the type—the ones who call to tell you that they "detected a problem" with your "Windows computer." 

But I didn't let him get that far. I wanted to know what company he worked for. It was something like "Rep Assist-something" or it might have been "Rep Asset-something"or maybe "Rat's Ass-something." Anyhow, I asked him what his company's website URL was. He tried to oblige me.

Between his thick accent and my deliberate mistakes as I slowly and laboriousy "attempted" to type the URL (while saying the letters I thought he said out loud and being corrected by him because I was saying the wrong ones), I wasn't able to get "your rep web assist (dot) com" (or something) and finally (in an exasperated voice after letting him know that I got "Rep Assist at Amazon") exclaimed, "There must be something wrong with my computer!" A moment of silence ensued. Then he hung up.

That was the fastest a scammer has ever hung up on me. Usually I can keep them going for a while. 

Sometimes I pretend I have to turn on my computer—which of course takes a while. And I push a bunch of button on the phone which makes little beeping noises for him. One guy had the nerve to tell me to stop doing that, and I had to insist this was how I started my computer. Then I have to put in the password which I spell out loud as I type it in: "S-u-p-e-r-c-a-l-i-f-r-a-g-i-l-i-s-t-i-c—Uh, oh! I think I left something out. Let me start again."

I kind of enjoy the Windows scam, wherein my "Windows computer" has gotten a virus or something, and the scammer will help me remove it. I try to drag the scammer out for a while (see password in previous paragraph), as he tells me to do such-and-such. One was flustered that I couldn't find a particular key, although he painstakingly described where it was on my keyboard. But I kept insisting it wasn't there. I knew it was't there because a Mac keyboard is different from a Windows keyboard, but it never occured to him I was using a Mac. I'm not the only Mac user who does this. Here's a pretty good YouTube video of a Mac user dealing with a Windows scammer: 

Recently I got a heavily accented computer scammer to hang up on me in less than 5 minutes! He didn't attempt to try my last name but asked if I was Miz Reee-beh-kuh and if I was the prime computer user. I agreed. That's when he told me they'd gotten reports of my computer downloading malicious downloads. 
Me:" Oh no! What's the name of these malicious downloads!"
He couldn't give me an answer. 
Me: "But if you know my computer has downloaded malicious downloads, you should certainly know the name of them! What are they called?"
I couldn't understand all he said next, but something to the effect that if I would turn on my computer, he would walk me through how to get rid of the malicious stuff.
Him (obviously reading from a script): "Now if you would step in front of your computer—"
Me: "Step in front of my computer? I don't understand!"
He repeated himself—"Now if you would step in front of your computer—" and I cut him off again.
Me: "I have to step in front of my computer?"
Him: "Yes, and then—"
Me: "But I'm sitting in front of if. I don't understand what you're asking. Do you want me to get up and do something like an Irish step dance?"
Silence (well, except for all the other scammers in the room where he was). Then he hung up.

It was just as well. I can't Irish step dance. But if you want to see step-dancing, here's a video:

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CenturyLink Scam

On June 1, the following email arrived in my inbox:

I thought it sounded a bit odd. It didn't address me—the customer—by name. Had it been sent to a group, it should have been sent to "customers."  The syntax didn't quite sound like English was Jobidd's native language. Also, I'm pretty sure that CenturyLink, being an internet provider, would use a centurylink.net email addy, not a zoom internet.net. Naturally, I didn't click on the page.

A few days later, I received a warning from "CenturyLink" about my mailbox being almost full. But they'll give me a free upgrade if I click my email address and re-login. Uh-oh.

Plus now the alleged CenturyLink rep is using a gmx.de email addy. I'm pretty sure CL wouldn't do that. Then came another one—a final warning—from a different sender at the gmx.de addy:

This time I hovered the cursor over my email addy that the scammer wanted me to click. It wasn't a link to CenturyLink at all (Are we surprised?) but a link to doitalwaysshhn (dot) com/ verified/ centurylink/ (. . .some more stuff. . . ) and ending in login (dot) htm. No way was I going to click to see where that went.

I'm also puzzled by the copyright notice on the bottoms of all three emails. Why would they be copyrighted? Would they sue me if I copied them?

Well, I didn't actually copy, did I? I just did 3 screen grabs that I exported as jpegs after altering my addy. 

I doubt I'm the only one being sent these scam emails. Y'all be careful what you click.

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Essay Inc Comment

Usually when someone comments on this blog, it's a day or two after I post—except in the case of the horse trailer scam where the scammers keep trying and folks keep Googling them and sharing their experiences. So, when I received this comment the other day. . .

. . . for "Two Memoirs About Writing" that  I'd posted a year ago, I was more than a little suspicious. For one thing, I'd written about two non-fiction books, not a "novel with a passionate look to it," and—while both were lovely books—the two books were not "such lovely novels."

And a student helped the scammer commentor "write my essay for me" (and "the quality was phenomenal") "helped me gather fictonal content"—Whoa! Fictional content for an essay?! Plus the rest of the sentence makes no sense. Obviously, English is not the commentor's first language.

The link in the comment leads to Essay Inc, which is supposedly based in the UK but has an Austin TX area code. Against my better judgment (Will malware infect my computer?), I went to the essay mill's site, and took a few screen shots of part of the home page:

Note that the writing on the website is no better than what's on the comment. Who would be desperate stupid enough to buy a "plagiarism free" essay in which "the authenticity of our work is never challenged" from this company?

Just in case a student is having second thoughts, the scam "essay site" attempts to play his fears:

Apparently these scam writing services services are popular ways to separate students from their (or their parents') money. There are even warning sites about which writing services not to use, like EssayScam's list of fake "essay website reviews" sites created by fraudulent term paper companies—because students who are trying to dupe their teachers certainly don't want to get duped themselves. 

There are even sites that recommend the best writing services, like this one. After all, if you're going to cheat, you certainly don't want to deal with a service that'll cheat you. And if you deal with any of  the multitude of sites that aren't even in America, getting a refund for services not rendered will be well nigh impossible.

During my Eng 101 teaching days more than a decade ago, a few freshmen attempted to hand in essays I knew they hadn't written themselves, and it was fairly easy to Google up selected parts of their essays. Now teachers have more sophisticated ways to detect plagiarism, such as this one. But Googling worked for me. In fact, I blogged about this topic last year on "Sarah Hill Shill."

But, back in those days, there were plenty of "free" essay sites to choose from. There still are. One is eCheat, which features an example of a personal essay that begins, "Three times a week after school I go visit my dad. When I enter the hospital room where he has lain in a coma since his accident. . . ."

Is that opening line a grabber, or what? Surely no English instructor would suspect a student who loves his poor, unfortunate dad so much of cheating!

But wait, there's more. "The Importance of a Father" is also on the essay sites Write Work, Essay Edge, and Kibin. And more. Plus the exact essay was published in 2008 and again in 2013 in a self-published book, How to Write Creative Non-fiction on p. 27 (When I Googled the opening two sentences of the essay, Googlebooks coughed up that title as one of the sources.) And the author of that book got it from a website about parenting. 

I used Amazon's "Look Inside!" feature to get this screen-shot.

Given the number of times this paticular essay appears on the Intenet, if a student turns it in as his own work, it won't take a professor long to find out what a low-life cheating scumbag the student is. All it takes is a little Googling.

If a student "borrows" an essay from the 'Net, he's likely to get caught. If he tries to buy one from a "writing services" site, he's likely to lose a pile of money. Either way, he's a loser.

Sometimes honesty is, after all, the best policy.

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Horse Trailer Scam Revisited

On May 14 2015, I posted about a horse trailer ad that my husband noticed on Craigslist. You can read it here: http://peevishpen.blogspot.com/2015/05/horse-trailer-scam.html. Anyhow, this ad sounded too good to be true. I was sure it was a scam and did a bit of Googling. Yep—it was a scam.

What surprised me was the number of folks who commented on my post. Some were almost taken in, but they did a bit of checking and found my blog. Last night I heard from a reader—Seth—who sent me some jpegs to post. It seems that the former "Jenny Cooper," now Eva Bond (who also uses the names Eva Baker, Amy Jones, Robert Munson, and Tara Lomas) is still selling that exact same horse trailer. Take a look (You'll have to click on the pictures to enlarge them):

Notice in the next one that "Tara" responds that she's "recently divorced" and has to sell the trailer fast because she's "leaving the country for a year on military duty with my medical team." Doesn't that tug at your heart? How could someone like that want to cheat you? Easy. . . .

From the comments on my original post, I knew she'd (he'd?) been selling a Bobcat and other equipment. But it turns out, she's also selling a car—a Nissan for only $1,500:

But folks are catching on:

Poor "Eva Bond" responds exactly like "Tara" in the horse trailer ad—that she's "recently divorced" and has to sell the car fast because she's "leaving the country for a year on military duty with my medical team." 

But word is getting out about Eva/Tara/Amy/Robert's scam. Check out Scam Warners at https://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&p=236495 . 

There's a post by someone who paid her money and didn't get the car at Scam Book: https://www.scambook.com/report/view/181303/Amy-Jones-Robert-L-Munson-Complaint-181303-for-$3,269.89

From what Seth told me, Eva/Tara/Amy/Robert/etc. uses fake gmail addys. Three of them begin totolomas65, emadun69, and evabond69. Plus she/he/they use a masked number when texting via Spoof Card that alters the caller's ID.

Let the potential buyer beware. And never underestimate the power of Google!

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Thanks, Seth, for sending me the info.

Kubota Scam

Every so often, a scammer tries to use Craigslist to make a bit of money. I've already posted about a horse trailer scam in May 2015. A lot of folks commented that they'd run into similar scams. Today my husband, who checks out farm equipment on Craigslist noticed an on the Lynchburg Craigslist that was just too good to be true—a Kubota backhoe, worth $20,000 for only $2,500, in Evington, VA.

Now, besides the way-too-low price, I noticed something else. The phone number wasn't a Virginia one. So I Googled a bit and found what looked like the same Kubota (with the same phone number) on the Morgantown (West Virginia?) Craigslist. Only this was a "KuBota."

The "LOader tlB dieSEL bAcKhOe KuBota HyStaT beautiful - $2500" was in New Salem. And the dirt it was digging was exactly like the dirt in Evington! Coincidence, or what?

A bit more Googling revealed the same tractor with the same phone number on the Cedar Rapids Craiglist, and this tractor was in Swisher. Not only did the ad have the same weird capitalization as the other two ads, but the tractor was digging the same black dirt as the other two. And doggone if the dead tree is just like the one in the first picture. Wow! What a coincidence.

 

Or maybe it isn't a coincidence. Maybe it's a just a scam. And that phone number—it's in Utah.

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Sarah Hill Shill?

This picture of Tanner sleeping has nothing  to do with this post's content.

Every so often, I get some spam comments submitted to this blog. Usually they're for recent posts, but when they're for posts from several years back, I get suspicious. When the same person comments on two old posts, I get more suspicious—as I did for these two posts from Sarah Hill, who is no doubt a shill for a scammy essay-writing service.

The first comment is for a two-sentence April 2008 post about a bird's nest. It has NOTHING to do with student writing. Plus, I haven't taught writing since 2007. And Sarah could use a little writing help herself ("As for it looks great!"):

The second one arrived 14 minutes after the first. Again, it was for an old post from 2008. Again, Sarah shills for the same essay mill. Again, her writing is, er, interesting: ". . . because it teats all the customers with respect and care. . . ." That certainly puts an image in my mind of customers having breasts attached—albeit it carefully and respectfully.

Now for a bit of irony. Sarah, bless her heart, just happened to reply to a post wherein I warn against essay mills. I even give an example of how bad the essays are by marking up a now-non-existant mill's offering.

I became aware of essay mills a few years ago while I was teaching Freshman Grammar & Comp. If a student's essay looked suspicious, I'd Google a phrase from it and see what popped up. My favorite was a descriptive essay in which a female student "wrote" about driving through fields of bluebells in Texas in 1995 with her boyfriend. (Let's see, an 18-year-old freshman in 2005 or 2006 would have been how old in 1995?) I Googled and found the essay posted on a professor's website at some Midwest university. He'd used it as a good example of a descriptive essay, and my student figured she couldn't go wrong with something like that, except . . . .

Now, teachers have more sophisticated means of detecting plagiarism, such as Turnitin and other plagiarism checkers. Odds are good, if a company sells an essay once, they'll sell it again.

When I checked out the site that shilly Sarah was touting, I found this right smack dab on the main page:

Why Oder indeed? 

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Ranveer Spam

This morning, between 2:28 and 2:35 AM, someone attempted to post spam comments to some older posts on my blog. Because I have to approve comments before they are posted, these #!* comments will not go on the blog posts the spammer intended. However, here are some screen shots I took. Notice that each one had links that would have been clickable if I'd posted them as comments. I have a feeling that clicking those links would not be a good idea.

Uh, the heirloom quilt was never a shipping pallet.

What the heck does that comment have to do with spreading mulch? And you "really appreciate with [my] blog?" English obviously isn't your first language, is it?

Huh?

Oh, sure. What blogger wouldn't have a catalogue of snow?

My border collie Maggie does not have acne.

Uh, you're repeating yourself, Ranveer. Are you just copying and pasting?

You're repeating yourself again, Ranveer. You are just copying and pasting!

Except it really wasn't great information.

You're repeating yourself again, Ranveer.

Why don't I believe you, Ranveer?

No it wasn't. It was a review of a book by a plagiarist. 

Now I'm wondering—would all this spam by Ranveer somehow be connected to the heavily accented scammer who called yesterday afternoon about my Windows computer sending him messages that it had a virus?

My husband answered the call, and kept repeating to the caller, "Are you Punjabi?" in a fake Indian accent. Then I picked up the phone, causing "Sam" to have to start at the top of his script again.

When he got to the part where my computer was sending him a message that it was infected, I interrupted: "How would my computer send you a message?" He replied, "Because it is infected."

Me: "How would it know to contact you?" Silence on his end (except for all the other voices at the call center) while he found the place in his script again.

That gave me time to say, "How would you know my computer is infected if you're not the person who infected it? You're a terrorist, aren't you?" I accused him of being a terrorist several times, each time louder than the last. Then I punched a bunch of random numbers on the phone and hung up.

I didn't even bother to tell him that I don't have a Windows computer.

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Horse Trailer Scam

Recently, my husband found an ad for a horse trailer on the Roanoke Craigslist. Doesn't it look great for a 1999 model?! And ONLY $1,500!!!!!

Now, we don't need another horsetrailer. We haven't used our 1995 aluminum Starro since we moved here in 1999. (A horse trailer makes a great moving van.) I've been using the Starro as a storage shed for years.

Figuring we could always use another reasonably priced storage shed, he emailed the seller. "What are you asking, and where is it located?" he wanted to know. Well, he already knew how much the trailer was from the ad, and he wanted to know if it was really in the Roanoke area. Here's the reply to his question. See if you can find some, er, suspicious things in it:

From: eva bond < evaxxxx@gmail.com >
Date: May 13, 2015 at 7:11:24 PM EDT
To: John
Subject: Re: Horse trailer

 John ,thanks for asking! our '99 EquiSpirit trailer is still for sale! is aluminium made and is in perfect condition, maintenance has been carried out at regular intervals. weights 3,000 lbs and 12 feet total length. also, has ramp, dressing room, 7'8" Interior height, 6'8" Interior width and 11' stall area. sell it because my boy of 24 died 3 months ago in a car accident, a drunk driver hit him and his fiance. he was with fiance's car coming to our home at his little brother birthday. it was my son's first car and brings me bad memories and it is for this reason that I sell so cheap ($1,550).

   I travel a lot with my work, and that is why i decided to sell using Online Services of eBay. they would protect both us and also gives you 5 days of inspection. all the documents and title will be arriving at your address at the same time as the vehicle in 2 business days. shipping is also PAID by me so it doesn't worry about.

  If you are interested let me know, Eva!

She attached lots of lovely pictures:

Notice the truck's bumper?
The license plate is blank.

And the trailer has a blank license plate, too.

That white interior is really clean.
Doesn't even have any dings or scuffs on it.

Those floor mats look in mint condition.

Even the spare tire is in mint condition!

The ad is no longer on Craigslist. It was already flagged as suspicious when John last saw it. Here's how we knew it wasn't a real ad:

*The description in the email sounds like a cut and paste job from an actual ad.
*English doesn't seem to be the seller's first language.
*"11' stall area" for 12' total length? So the dressing room is only one foot?!
*The sad story about the death of her son (and his "fiance") and the fact that this horse trailer "was my son's first car and brings me bad memories and it is for this reason that I sell so cheap." Uh, how did the son drive the horse trailer????
*The ad was on Craigslist, but she seems to have forgotten that: "that is why i decided to sell using Online Services of eBay."
*The vehicle will arrive in only two business days and she pays all the shipping. Yeah, right.
*Plus all the documents and the title will arrive "at the same time as vehicle."

Wouldn't it take way more than two business days to get this trailer from Nigeria? Because I have a hunch that's where this ad came from.

This scammy ad has been floating around for a while and other sites have noticed. Here's one from February in which she says, "I'm selling it because my boy of only 25 died 5 months ago in a car accident." Wow! She lost two sons to car accidents!? And that site mentions the trailer is in an eBay warehouse in Dallas.

Update: the scam continues. See http://peevishpen.blogspot.com/2017/01/horse-trailer-scam-revisited.html

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